Legacy, memory of Rosa Parks honored

DEARBORN — Rosa Parks would have turned 100 Monday and The Henry Ford threw a party for the late civil rights pioneer.

The museum’s Day of Courage coincided with the unveiling of a new postage stamp honoring Parks, who became one of the earliest icons of the civil rights movement after refusing to give up her seat to a white patron on a Montgomery, Ala., bus Dec. 1, 1955.

Her subsequent arrest sparked a boycott of the city’s transit system and emboldened the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other pioneers of the movement to bring their demands for change into the open. Parks moved to Detroit after the boycott ended but remained active in the movement.

She was part of the 1963 march on Washington and the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march and later was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. After her death in 2005, she became the first woman and second African-American to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

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Parks soon will return there, in a way. A statue will be added to the Capitol’s collection in Statuary Hall.

The 46-cent stamp, based on a 1950s portrait of Parks, was created by artist Thomas Blackshear II. It’s a “forever” stamp, which will remain valid for first-class letters even after postage rates increase.

Parks had an influence on U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit — one of several speakers before the stamp was unveiled — long before he ran for Congress.

“When I finished law school, I couldn’t wait to get down South to march,” he said.

When he ran for his seat in the House of Representatives, he had Parks’ endorsement. Later, she worked on his staff for 18 years.

Bond said Parks wasn’t the first person arrested for refusing to give up a bus seat, but she was the first to plead not guilty.

“Breaking Alabama law was defending the Constitution,” Bond said. “It falls to us to continue that fight.”

Admission to Henry Ford Museum was free Monday and hundreds of schoolchildren and adults spent the morning and afternoon exploring its massive collection. Naturally, the focal point was the restored bus Parks was riding when she refused to move.

Contact Scott Held at 1-734-246-0865 or sheld@heritage.com. Follow him on Facebook and @ScottHeld45 on Twitter.